Tag : family separations

Thank You, AOC, for Inspiring Jews to Stand Up for Immigrants

Let me just put it out there: As a Jew, I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s now-notorious Instagram post on June 17 comparing the border detention centers to concentration camps was brave and magnificent.

Her use of this phrase, which some Jews seem to believe belongs to them and them alone, keeps pushing the debate forward and forces us to look squarely at what is happening as the result of Trump’s unconscionable policies: crying children being snatched out of their parents arms at the Texas border, for the “crime” of trying to cross over into a better life, and held in squalid conditions in mass detention centers.

Pharaoh’s Family Separation Policy: A Midrash

This midrash was written in a wonderful class taught by Sabrina Sojourner at the National Havurah Institute in July 2018. We had just gotten home from a trip, organized by the American Federation of Teachers to include religious leaders, teachers, and activists to Tornillo, Texas, on the border between El Paso and Mexico, where children, separated from their parents after crossing the border, were being held by our government.

From “locals” who live in El Paso, we were told that in Tornillo, where our government has just shipped thousands of migrant children to tent cities in the dark of night along with the detention center that has housed “kidnapped” children for months now, the drinking water is tainted, much like the water in Flint, MI. As Michael Moore said in his movie Fahrenheit 11/9, that’s one way to get rid of people you don’t want in your country…

If “Incivility” Makes You Sympathize with Racism, You Were Racist Already

When I was an undergrad, I sat on my Women’s Center Collective. We made decisions by consensus. All it took was one person to block something and it wouldn’t happen. So it took a while for things to happen. We had to talk about everything. And it could be super frustrating when something you cared about died in process because of the deeply held convictions (or intransigence) of some who maybe didn’t even totally understand the issue.

God, it was annoying. God, were we annoying. Believe me when I say that I fantasized more than once about a (benevolent, run by me) dictatorship of liberal ideals. Think about how much we (ahem, I) could get done! Imagine how quickly we could organize if we weren’t so minutely attuned to what might cause offense to…someone. Anyone.

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A recorded conversation with Joy Ladin at Washington's DCJCC. She's wonderfully instructive, sometimes in deeply poignant ways; listen carefully here when she describes, among other things, the plight of transgender teens and their very basic need for shelter.